1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to aircraft and airframe structures and methods for manufacturing them. More particularly, it relates to airframes designed for modular fabrication with a high degree of parts commonality for different aircraft based on the same airframe.
2. Background Information
The requirements for modern military aircraft are diverse. For example, some must be suitable for flight off an aircraft carrier. This involves the aircraft being compact and capable of taking off and landing within the constraints imposed by the carrier's physical dimensions. For some applications, a military aircraft must be capable of vertical landing. In others, conventional takeoff and landing capabilities are desired. There also may be differing requirements for cockpit configurations, weapons configurations, and the like.
Up to now, fabrication of military aircraft has been costly. In part, this is because aircraft manufacturers have met differing requirements for propulsion systems, flight regimes, cockpit configuration, and weapons configurations, by designing separate and different airframes for each set of requirements. This leads to high cost, since the lack of parts commonality makes any economies of scale impossible. Thus, high performance tactical aircraft at affordable cost has been difficult to achieve.
It has not been known, heretofore, how to develop a family of separate and distinct aircraft from a single common baseline airframe that can be easily modified to accommodate varying requirements for propulsion systems, cockpit configurations, etc. What is needed is an approach to aircraft manufacturing that leads to a high degree of commonality of parts and affordable cost and, at the same time, high performance using advanced technologies.